Over the last decades, interest in vehicle electrification has been on the rise since electric vehicles are known to be less air polluting than traditional combustion engine vehicles and help in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. While several manufacturers have started to develop new hybrid vehicles and battery powered vehicles most vehicles on our roads are still combustion engine vehicles. It is even more the case for truck vehicles that are generally bigger vehicles requiring more power than simple passenger vehicles. Large fleets of truck vehicles, often owned by companies, municipalities/cities and various other government organizations, are on the road for extensive amounts of hours and rapidly reach a high mileage. It is known that accumulated mileage on a vehicle is an indicator of the wear sustained by the combustion engine. Vehicles being used extensively during a relatively short period of time present a powertrain and more specifically a combustion engine having a short life in comparison with the vehicle body. This results in having to prematurely, replace the truck vehicle by a new truck vehicle after only a few years of use and incurring extensive costs. Some have attempted to replace the powertrain of those vehicles with electric powertrains since electric motors are known to last longer in addition to being less air polluting. In fact electric motors are known to outlast the body life of the truck. For this reason, many have developed solutions to convert a combustion vehicle, such as a truck, into an electric vehicle.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,562,178 to Worden et al. discloses a rear drive electric vehicle and presents a vehicle layout in which an electric motor is located at the rear of the vehicle's rear axle. The vehicle has an electric motor that is connected to a drive shaft that drives the vehicle's rear axle through a rearwards facing differential. This arrangement leaves the entire underside of the vehicle from the front axle to the rear axle available to accommodate batteries or other large bulky devices.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,050,897 to Collins discloses a kit for replacing an internal combustion engine of a truck vehicle with an electric motor, batteries and electric generator. As much of the existing vehicle as possible is left unmodified so that the inclusion of the kit with the existing vehicle can be as simple as possible. However since different vehicles have a volume and geometry of space available after the internal combustion engine has been removed and have a variety of different orientations of drive shaft, the kit must be configured differently for each vehicle with which it is intended to be used, to simplify the installment of the kit.
Even though many have attempted in simplifying the replacement of an original powertrain by an electric powertrain, the above mentioned references do not disclose a way to convert a combustion engine vehicle into an electric vehicle that still follows the various safety regulations as is the case for the combustion engine vehicle originally released by the manufacturer. Therefore there is a need for a kit and method of converting a combustion engine vehicle to an electric vehicle that follows the same safety regulations while still remaining simple to convert. Moreover, the above mentioned references do not disclose a conversion kit that is reusable.